The man killed when he was hit by the truck being driven by local businessman William D. "Billy" Abraham jumped in front of it, a witness said Monday during the first day of trial.

Abraham is charged with intoxicated manslaughter in connection with the 2010 death of Jay Grady, 47. Abraham is also charged with accident involving injury or death. The case is being tried in the 384th District Court before Judge Patrick Garcia.

Juan Antonio Milton Martinez, who was standing near Paisano Drive at the time of the accident, said Grady appeared "drunk," and "out of balance" when the accident happened.

"He was very close to the street like he wanted to commit suicide or something," Martinez said. "I noticed he jumped to the truck."

During opening statements Monday morning, Dick DeGuerin, Abraham's defense attorney, said that the evidence will prove the accident was unavoidable because the street was dark and Grady was acting recklessly.

"I think the evidence will show he lunged out in front of Billy Abraham's car," DeGuerin said. "I think the evidence will show that if it had been Billy Abraham drunk or stone cold sober ... this accident was unavoidable. This accident would have happened to anyone because of the actions of Jay Grady."

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DeGuerin, who once represented U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, said the defense will not argue if Abraham was drunk or sober. Instead, they will argue that it didn't matter, because the accident was Grady's fault.

Prosecutors said they will prove Abraham was drunk at the time of the accident and that he never even stopped to check on Grady.

During his testimony, Martinez said Grady was standing in the road, away from a crosswalk, when he was hit by the truck.

Earlier Melvin Harris, another eye witness, said it looked like Grady was in the crosswalk. But Harris was driving about a block behind Abraham's truck.

"The man continued to walk and the white truck continued to go forward," Harris said. "At that time I see the white truck hit the man. The man went flying and the white truck kept going forward."

Harris said he stopped briefly to check on the pedestrian and to answer a phone call from his wife. Then he tried to catch up to the white truck to get a licence plate number.

Abraham was later stopped by U.S. Border Patrol agents who saw the truck leave the scene.

Officer Adrian Cisneros, from the El Paso Police Department's Special Traffic Investigations Unit, told jurors that Grady's body slid down the road and stopped near the intersection of Paisano Drive and El Paso Street. When police arrived, Grady's body was in a pool of blood.

A civil lawsuit filed against Abraham by Grady's family allege that Abraham had a blood alcohol content of 0.20, which is more than twice the legal limit of 0.08.